News

Some people believe by watching the news they know what's going on in the world, at least about important issues such as natural disasters. But it seems disasters are being reported simply as a smoke screen to hide other
manipulations happening in the world. Obviously disasters really happen and it's important to know what's going on in the world, but these reports seem to be coming at the expense of covering core issues like the fraudulence of our current monetary system, the sorry state of our education/indoctrination system or the global corporate takeover of our governments.

The fact is we have no idea what is actually going on in the world no matter how
much TV we watch because corporations are determining what we are seeing. What we are getting is information private companies want us to have, and we get hooked by their promoted and distracting sensationalism. Hurricanes are more engaging than parliament.

Media critic Michael Parenti in his article "Monopoly Media Manipulation" takes this thought even further: "More insidious than the sensationalistic hype is the artful avoidance. Truly sensational stories (as opposed to sensationalistic) are downplayed or avoided outright. Sometimes the suppression includes not just vital details but the entire story itself, even ones of major import. Reports that might reflect poorly upon the national security state are least likely to see the light of day....being suppressed with a consistency that would be called 'totalitarian' were it to occur in some other countries."

Maxwell E McCombs and Donald L Shaw show the political ramifications of this issue with their article "The Agenda-Setting Function of the Mass Media" in the academic journal The Public Opinion Quarterly published by Oxford University Press: "the mass media set the agenda for each political campaign, influencing the salience of attitudes toward the political issues." [italics in original]

And Bernard C Cohen in his 1963 book The Press and Foreign Policy boils it down to the almost unarguable: "[The Press] may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think about." Imagine how much more true this is in 2012 when six multinational corporations control almost everything the average North American sees, hears or reads.

Verily I say the only place we can have any idea what is going on is inside ourselves. And the mass hypnosis masquerading as news coming through the TV set and other sources is hindering even that. Wake up!

I Am

I have no other desire than to seek out and fulfil the will of God to the best of my ability. Generally that means telling the truth, ugly and subjective as that might be. For me it has been and continues to be a dirty and crazy journey and far from safe.